


Unto Your Enemy

by vellaphoria



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Divergence - War of the Elves and Sauron, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Victim Blaming, somewhat LACE compliant, tfw when you chain your ex to a flagpole until he admits that you’re right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Sauron makes a different choice. Celebrimbor still suffers.





	Unto Your Enemy

The knife pressed in deeper, sawing through lacerated skin and frayed muscle to scrape against the bone of Celebrimbor’s ribs.

His throat was ragged and worn. And though the seasons had changed twice since he had managed something so painful as screaming, he had yet to run out of tears. They spilled from his eyes in sluggish trails of heat, the salt of them only stinging once they reached the broken skin of his chest.

His face, Sauron had left, contorted as it was with the quiet whimpering that bubbled up through the cracks in whatever faint resistance he could muster.

It wasn’t enough.

It had to be.

The knife cut again. Celebrimbor’s head lolled, his muscles unable to support its weight.

Even in his exhaustion, despite the weakness of his flesh, he had not yet spoken of where he sent the Three. He had not thought of it either, for each painful touch of Sauron’s tools was underscored by the sense of _prying_, of whispers at the edge of his mind.

Threats and promises wrapped up in the hushed nothings of a lover, sharp as the pain in Celebrimbor’s breathing but sweet and false as the gentle, barely-there kisses Sauron would pause his cutting to lavish on tracts of unbroken skin.

But always, _always_ he demanded the location of the three.

_Because they are your greatest work._

_Because you want to better Middle Earth._

_Because you love me._

Celebrimbor had not thought he could find humor in any part of the world anymore, but the absolute _certainty_ with which Sauron thought it sent a cruel, shaking kind of laughter tearing through his lungs as thoroughly as Sauron’s knives had rent his chest.

Sauron scowled, breaking the ósanwe.

“What are you _possibly_ accomplishing with this?” Sauron hissed, audibly, this time.

He sat close enough that Celebrimbor could hear every flicker of frustration in his voice as he let the helpless shake of Celebrimbor’s laughter drag the knife further into the jagged crosshatch of blood and ruined skin.

It devolved swiftly into shivering. Though whether it was from the workshop’s lack of insulation or if Sauron had once again let him lose too much blood, Celebrimbor was uncertain.

The hearth blazed with wood torn from Ost-in-Edhil’s ruined infrastructure, but it did little for the ice in his bones.

Celebrimbor had survived winters from Nargothrond to Himring – though never _true_ cold, as his cousins who had crossed the Helcaraxë had readily informed him. But his time protected from the elements by furs and heavy robes had done little to prepare him for the way that the end of the season could cut deep into uncovered skin and cut deeper still into uncovered muscle.

The cold seeped up through the flagstones and slunk through the window that had been opened wide to the sound of Sauron’s occupying army.

That, Celebrimbor thought, chilled him more than the rest of it.

Figuratively, of course.

In a more literal sense, his body lacked the energy to warm itself, and his captor had little incentive to rectify matters. This wasn’t helped by the pace at which his blood flowed freely from his wounds to pool on the floor in a mess of reds and drying browns.

_Too much blood_ was a concept he had recently spent far too much time contemplating. More so since, after so many seasons spent in captivity, it had started to feel almost _easy_ to vex Sauron to such carelessness.

Ignoring whatever his torturer happened to be saying, for example, was one of the more effective methods.

When Celebrimbor failed to respond to his question, Sauron’s frown deepened, sending a furrow across the brow of Annatar’s meticulously constructed face.

Though Celebrimbor knew better now than to let its beauty disarm him – though he knew what lay _beneath_ – Sauron still insisted on the façade.

Yet, Celebrimbor supposed that his discomfort was probably the point.

In truth, he would have preferred for Sauron to have come to him as anything but this.

Why could the fell creature not have sieged Ost-In-Edhil as Angband’s master of torments or else as the lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth who haunted the whispers of Finrod’s memory?

Celebrimbor would have faced a thousand horrors, stared unflinching at molten metal eyes, been unmoved by unnumbered teeth set in a feral wolf’s maw. But this. _This_.

All this would have been so much easier if he had come to Celebrimbor as anything but the blood-splattered form of his lover twisted to savage purpose.

Sauron pulled the knife back and tightened the hand he had braced on Celebrimbor’s shoulder. His grip was strong enough that it felt as if he would snap the bones beneath.

Accidentally, this time.

Celebrimbor could feel the heat coming off his body in waves; Sauron’s anger, made manifest.

As Annatar, his closeness had been a blessing on Eregion’s coldest nights, diminishing the function of the braziers in Celebrimbor’s personal chambers from one of warmth to one of maintaining appearances. Galadriel had been suspicious enough of Annatar while she still dwelt with the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and Celebrimbor had been loath to spark her ire with evidence of his more … unconventional relationship with the maia in their midst by forgoing heating in his rooms altogether.

But that was then. And, at the end of all things, Galadriel had been _right_.

Free of any pretense, it felt as if the fireplace’s dying embers were right beneath Sauron’s skin, as if he would burn Celebrimbor alive if he sat any closer for his work.

But did not move closer, and the knife did not return.

Distantly, Celebrimbor heard it clatter against a nearby table. He did not look up until the chair opposite of his scraped across the floor, grinding its wooden legs against the unyielding stone.

The heat was swiftly replaced with cold rushing in, and, for all that Sauron’s distance meant even the smallest of reprieves from the pain, Celebrimbor’s muscles felt as if they were screaming in protest at his retreat.

By the time his body remembered how to move his head, Sauron was halfway across the workshop, pacing the length of the room in quick, tense steps.

“What are –” Celebrimbor broke off coughing, his voice rough and shattered. “What are _you_ accomplishing?” He asked, glaring across the workshop. “I will not tell you of them. I will _never_ tell you.”

Sauron halted his pacing before the hearth, his back turned to Celebrimbor.

Celebrimbor sucked in as much breath as his lungs would allow him. It took far more energy than it should have to force his voice to stability.

“Perhaps you have lost your touch?” He asked, almost as clearly as he would have in centuries past when giving lectures to the assembled Mírdain.

This, in of itself was a gamble. But, Celebrimbor thought, let it never be said that the line of Fëanor was known for sound decision-making.

The tension in Sauron’s physical form became nearly _audible_, like the crackling of a torch set carelessly among the parched stalks of a field in drought.

Celebrimbor knew all too keenly that water capable of quenching such fires was always the first thing cut off in an effective siege.

Like land set ablaze, Sauron turned on him, eyes alight with fury. His steps seemed to scorch the very stone beneath him as he crossed the room, coming to a halting stop before Celebrimbor as a tower of flame; hot enough to burn, to suffocate any resistance to his will.

At the beginning of all this, it might have even worked.

But there was no new fear left in Celebrimbor – it had drained from him with the blood spilled from each new cut and peeled away from him with the charred skin left in the wake of Sauron’s hands. All he had left to him was the shaking, senseless _stubbornness_ that had doomed his family time and time again.

At least, Celebrimbor thought, one of them was finally putting the impulse to good use.

Though all but the echoes of their legacy of blood and ruin had sunk beneath the waves with Beleriand, or else been set hauntingly amidst the night sky, his people had long memories.

Arda had not seen fit to let Celebrimbor forget _exactly_ who his dispossessed father name first came from.

Once, long ago, he had thought to weather the snickering antipathy of Ereinion’s court long enough that they might do more than tolerate him. It had been little more than a fantasy, in the end, and upon leaving Lindon Celebrimbor had resolved that if they would not see fit to forget his family, he would make sure they would _remember_.

After all, his former lover was not the only one who knew what it was to _burn_.

“You will never have the Three, _Sauron_.” He said – drawing upon his uncle Celegorm, on the impudence in Galadriel’s face when she told the Valar exactly what they could do with their ban – as he forced his mouth to a reckless grin around his words. “You will fail, and Middle-Earth will be lost to you just as it was to your _master_ –”

Faster than even elven eyes could track, Sauron’s knife scraped once more into the incision above Celebrimbor’s ribs, the blade pulling down and _tearing_ away its length in flesh and muscle from his bone.

For the first time in recent memory, Celebrimbor _screamed_.

Cutting its way out of his chest, the knife pressed tight against his throat. Its metal was still warm with the heat it had stolen from his body.

“Speak _not_ of him.” Sauron growled, eyes flickering into halo of fire ringing slit pupils. “And thou wouldst do well to stay thy tongue from the crude insults of thy people.”

“_Gorthaur_,” Celebrimbor spat, gritting his teeth against the pain. He inclined his head towards the ruin of his chest as much as he could around the blade. “Cruel one. Would you deny the truth of it?”

Sauron leaned into the knife, bracing a knee on the chair Celebrimbor was tied to. This close, he felt as metal heated past the point of workability; utterly intractable and fit to burn the flesh from Celebrimbor’s bones before it could be cut off piece by ragged piece.

A thin line of blood bloomed across his neck.

At the speed of it, Celebrimbor fell back on instinct, flinching away from the blade and pressing himself flat against the back of the chair. The knife did not follow.

Sauron blinked once, twice, Annatar’s fair face twisted into something betraying the truer nature beneath before an expression Celebrimbor was not certain how to describe settled over his features.

And then the knife was gone, secreted away to a holster Celebrimbor wasn’t sure if he’d be able to reach even if his hands _were_ free.

It was like pulling a lever on one of the siege machines that had broken Ost-in-Edhil’s walls.

In one moment, Sauron seemed ready to make that final cut and end it all, and in the next, he had schooled his features into something more neutral, if not quite the sweet, cloying expression he had worn when he first came to Celebrimbor’s city bearing gifts.

“Too often your people mistake _fairness_ for cruelty, Tyelperinquar,” he said, resting a hand on Celebrimbor’s cheek in a mockery of gentleness. “I am _trying_ to help. You _were_ given every opportunity to rectify your mistakes, and when you chose not to, you forced my hand: a logical, if unfortunate, progression of events.”

“To _help?_” Celebrimbor spluttered. “How does _any_ of this even _remotely_ –”

Sauron sighed, long and exasperated as if, as Annatar, he had been asked to cover one of the Mírdain’s apprentice classes.

His annoyance resolved itself into a low note resonating somewhere deep in his throat, reverberating through the air and into Celebrimbor’s bones. If there were words in it, they were either too quiet for him to hear, or else Sung in a language he had no comprehension of.

So few were its remaining practitioners, that, after the fall of Beleriand, Celebrimbor had thought he would not hear a voice raised in Song, in _power_, again.

The last few years were not how he had pictured the art’s return to the world.

Celebrimbor tried to speak, but only empty air would leave his mouth. With a dawning, quiet horror, he realized his speech had been stolen from him with little more than a thought.

The hand on his cheek trailed downward, leaving a slick trail of blood as fingers moved to trace the line of his throat.

Sauron’s smile was small, almost rueful, before he took one step back, then another, until he turned and walked at a tightly controlled pace to a basin at the far side of what was once their shared workshop.

“If you thought your attempts at provocation to be _subtle_,” he said, disregarding Celebrimbor’s outburst. “You may need to reconsider your conception of the term … and against whom you attempt such tactics. Goading _me_ will do little.”

Considering the pain in his neck and the fresh blood on his throat, Celebrimbor would have disagreed, had he the ability to speak.

Sauron submerged his hands in the waiting water, washing them of blood.

In the silence that followed, steam began to rise from the basin.

Celebrimbor wondered if Sauron noticed his physical form was running too hot. The steam rose, wreathing him, dissipating as it mingled with the smoke of the few candles that lit the room; their light glinted softy, incongruous against the sadistic intent of the iron tools arranged neatly on the workshop’s main table.

They were none that Celebrimbor had seen before Sauron’s forces had invaded Eregion, though he had little doubt those he knew who had survived Angband would know them even more intimately than he had come to after the comparatively short time spent at their mercy.

At _Sauron’s_ mercy.

For much of his time beneath Sauron’s knife, he had imagined Galadriel muttering something to the effect of _I told you so_ to the missive he’d sent out of the city with the last of his people.

A warning, and an apology.

If nothing else, the flight of Eregion’s citizens, sent to safety with their allies in Khazad-dûm, he had managed. He could only hope his capture had given them enough time to escape beneath Sauron’s notice.

Celebrimbor alone would suffer his mistakes, and he would deny Sauron to the end.

The crackling of the fireplace and the slow lap of doubtlessly bloodied water hung heavy in the room. Celebrimbor closed his eyes, letting his head hang once more. He drew breath in time with the sluggish beat of his heart, each movement of his chest a battle between pain and the necessity of air.

It felt as if an age had passed before Sauron deigned to speak again.

“Really, Tyelpe,” he said and, though he was angled away from Celebrimbor, the smile in his words was as audible as the sweetness in them was misplaced. “If I had any intention of returning you to the Valar’s despotism, I would have had _centuries_ to accomplish such.

“Despite what you may believe, you _are_ valuable to me. Why else would I have consented to such a union but to bind enduringly something of such worth to myself and my service? _This –_,” Sauron removed a hand from the basin, gesturing between them and flicking water in Celebrimbor’s direction. “Is not a bond that may be undone by something so mundane as the severance of your fëa from your hröa.

“And such oaths_ are _binding, my love. You should know this better than most.”

Once Celebrimbor looked beyond his instinct to retch at such a declaration, he supposed Sauron had something of a point. The laws and customs of his people were not written to account for duplicity such as Annatar’s and utilized a definition of free will that was easily circumvented or exploited.

Yet, in a weak moment, Celebrimbor thought with ósanwe, though he had heretofore been careful with his mental barriers. He pictured rising from the chair, walking to the window and throwing it wide; screaming for anyone who cared to listen that he had not named the One, that he had not made such promises as the demon before him implied. For all that those were not the parts that really _mattered_ in such things, he maintained he had not done them all the same.

He had sworn no oaths; not for vengeance, not for love. Not for anyone.

But what was tradition to one whose own father had named him twice dispossessed? One who was still called _traitor_ in whispered tones despite his disavowal of his family’s fell deeds? Whose family had fought the darkness to the end as much as they had incurred it; a fight Celebrimbor would continue, even now, when faced with an old evil thought lost to the world before it had been enhanced by the work of his unknowing hands?

He would see this through unto his destruction; the memories of adoring smiles and searing passion damn him and be damned in return.

He projected this forth with all the malice of the grimace cut across his face.

The steam increased twofold, and the water sounded as if it were boiling, though he couldn’t quite tell across the distance.

“You are right, of course,” Sauron said, glancing sideways at Celebrimbor. “That the name of the One does not _matter_ when it is the _act_ that is binding. But, my love, not _all_ oaths are spoken, though your cries of pleasure at our union were sweet indeed. Only give up this petty recalcitrance and I might bring such words to your lips once more. Tell me where they are, Tyelpë, and all is forgiven.”

The Maiar, Celebrimbor had come to learn, had odd conceptions of incarnate emotion. That Sauron apparently had little care for Celebrimbor’s forgiveness of _him_ – withheld in perpetuity as it would likely be – was nothing of a surprise, though it galled him all the same.

Even had he the power to speak, there were few things Celebrimbor had not already said.

He marshaled his reserves, pulling together what little energy he had left, and spat in Sauron’s general direction. As expected, it fell far short of the intended target, instead landing between them to mix with the mess of blood and other bodily fluids congealing before Celebrimbor’s chair.

Sauron watched the progress of its arc with mild disinterest, raising a single eyebrow at Celebrimbor’s rejection.

“You are not ignorant to the workings of Arda, Tyelperinquar,” he said, returning Celebrimbor’s glare. “You have to recognize how _inefficient_ this is. I have the Nine. Already, you have told me the locations of the Seven – it makes no _sense_ why you will not do the same for the Three.”

He paused, removing his hands from the basin and letting the water evaporate off of them with the heat from his skin. The right one he held higher, examining the One he wore on his first finger. In the twilight of the room, it practically radiated power.

“You know that I felt them? Their power? It was _good_ work, Tyelpë, and they could _help_ Middle Earth. Was that not why we first set out to create such things? Or did your greed – the same that led you to use stolen knowledge in their crafting – also bid you turn your back on the plight of the world? To hoard them for yourself, to the detriment of all?”

Across the room, Sauron’s eyes seemed to _glow_; molten gold beneath half-lowered lids. The room’s faint lighting drew long shadows across him, painting Annatar’s face in heavy contrast.

“Though I suppose you must be similar to your grandfather in _some_ respect,” he said, drawing closer to Celebrimbor with each word. “I _had_ hoped it would be in craftsmanship rather than willful disregard for others’ wellbeing, but,” he paused, stopping once more before Celebrimbor. “Your decisions remain your own. Far be it from me to compel you to make the _right _choice or anything even resembling a _logical_ –”

There was a knock at the workshop door; three quick raps, sharp and piercing the air.

He did not finish his thought.

“Yes, what is it?” He said, waving over the harried looking guard who had stuck her head into the room. At least, the human seemed like a her. It was hard to tell, sometimes, with mannish peoples.

The guard closed the door behind her with almost excessive care before crossing the floor of the workshop. She was seemingly unaffected by the scene before her but for carful glances downward so that she might step around the worst of the mess.

She came to a sudden stop at a distance more respectful than even the servants of Celebrimbor’s notoriously irascible father had been known to leave. There, she bowed deeply.

Sauron raised what appeared, to Celebrimbor, to be a slightly annoyed eyebrow.

“Well?” Sauron asked, quickly losing patience with the guard.

She stepped forward once more and said –

Celebrimbor was not certain _what_ she said. It was spoken in syllables grating and harsh; the sound of it was similar to the shouting of orcs he had heard outside of the workshop’s window, but it was like no language Celebrimbor had truly heard before.

It struck him that the guards normally responsible for untying and retying him according to Sauron’s whims had never spoken in his presence. This may have been the first time since the evacuation that he had heard someone other than Sauron speak.

When she finished her report, Sauron nodded once. A vicious, horrible expression clawed its way across his face. He appeared to ask her questions in the same incomprehensible speech, to which she answered with a confidence Celebrimbor had come to associate with career soldiers.

There was a final exchange between them that caused the guard’s eyebrows to draw together in concern or perhaps confusion.

“For the benefit of our guest,” Sauron concluded, in Sindarin, rather than the Quenya of the earlier interrogation.

The guard still seemed skeptical. Though she appeared to address Celebrimbor, when she spoke, her eyes remained averted.

“The approach from the west was quicker than anticipated,” she said. Her words were steeped in the vocal influences of one who would likely be more comfortable with Adûnaic. “They’ve reached the Baranduin.”

“But?” Sauron prompted.

“But they’ve underestimated our host. Their forces would be routed in a direct confrontation.”

She did not look at him, but Celebrimbor could see no trace of falsehood in her.

He would not react to that information.

He had sacrificed his city – the work of nearly one thousand years worth of craftsmanship and innovation meant to be a beacon shining out of the darkness the first age had wrought – and his life to ensure the safety of his people. To give them _time_ to prepare for an assault. Not to… bring an army smaller than Sauron’s host, leaving the way open for him to pursue a counterassault on Lindon and the Havens.

But he would not allow Sauron the victory of his reaction. He would _not_.

“Thank you,” Sauron said, dismissing the guard. When Sauron looked away, she glanced quickly at Celebrimbor and, to her considerable surprise, accidentally met his eyes. Whatever she saw there drained the color from her face, and she scurried from the room so quickly that Celebrimbor thought she might slip on the bloodied floor.

Sauron turned back to Celebrimbor, face alight with the look of one who thought he had already won.

“Our scouts tell me that the approaching forces bear the High King’s sigil, and are led by his herald,” Sauron said, perching on a table set next to where Celebrimbor was tied. Irritatingly, the unstained white of his robes brushed where the ropes had worn away at the skin of Celebrimbor’s arms. Sauron looked smug as he continued, “For some incomprehensible reason, you served in the court of Lindon for a time, did you not? Perhaps you know him?”

Just because Sauron, as Annatar, had refused to associate with Gil-Galad’s delegations, did not mean he didn’t damn well know the answer to his own question. After all, it was Elrond who had first denounced the maia as false and bearing suspect purpose.

In private, they had fought quite bitterly after Celebrimbor had welcomed Annatar into his city, and they had not spoken in person for several centuries afterword.

But Sauron likely knew this, from his smirk, and Celebrimbor would not have liked to discuss it in any case. He had already parted with too much of his family on bad terms. And, though they were family by association rather than blood, he was not certain he could bear the thought that his and Elrond’s last parting had been sour.

Even less would he enjoy seeing Elrond routed at Sauron’s hands, and for Celebrimbor’s sake too.

“Tell me where the rings are, Tyelpë,” Sauron crooned. “And we can put all this unpleasantness behind us. I will even let Elrond Half-Elven and his people leave in peace, though he is descended from one who once did me great injury.”

At another low bar of Song, the pressure on his throat fell away. Permission to speak; as clear as if Sauron had demanded it.

“No,” Celebrimbor said, spitting blood from his mouth. Sauron’s robes remained annoyingly unstained, but he continued. “And you deserved far worse. Had Lúthien not stayed Huan’s jaws, it would have been too quick a death.”

Sauron did not rise once more to anger, to recklessness, as he had hoped.

Instead, he sighed, his expression something like disappointment. His smile stretched thin and wan across Annatar’s face.

“Fine, Tyelpë,” he said, leaning close. Celebrimbor jerked as far away as his bonds would let him. It wasn’t far enough.

Sauron’s hands were dry and warm against Celebrimbor’s jaw, but his lips were soft against his temple. Celebrimbor shook, and told himself it was only from fear.

“We’ll try a different way.”

* * *

Celebrimbor woke retching, gagging on air thick with the stench of orcs. Again.

Though he had little left to expel, the convulsions wracked his body, jolting it from the steady swing it had become accustomed to. The movement wrenched his shoulder, building upon the pressure of his suspension and nearly forcing his arm from its socket.

Again.

By the time they subsided, Celebrimbor was left swinging, albeit in the controlled, regular motion of one shackled to a fixed point and made a pendulum by their own weight.

Said fixed point was the juncture at which the shackle’s chain connected to a tall, iron war banner, welded in place. The banner, in turn, was carried by a troll that sunk into the muddy, melted ground of Eregion’s nascent springtime with each step it took. The resulting lurch did little to help Celebrimbor’s nausea.

That he was chained by only his _right_ hand, Celebrimbor had refused to comment on. He would not give Sauron the satisfaction of thinking himself _clever_ in his symbolism.

It _was_ a variation on a theme inexorably linked to the line of Fëanor – 

Celebrimbor used the motion to aim a kick at the troll on the next pass close to its head, reflexively pulling his leg out of the way when its free hand – a massive, misshapen thing – swept up to bat at empty air, as if a particularly persistent insect had bitten it.

– but it was a variation nonetheless. Thangorodrim in motion. Unoriginal, and unimaginative in all the ways the short eternity of torture preceding it had not been.

But the _stench_ – and the decision to submerge him in it constantly – Celebrimbor felt that _that_ was truly inspired.

It assaulted his senses, worming its way through his skin to claw at his lungs and throat with intent as vicious as the orcs marching around him. They stank of the very worst of battlefields: steel and smoke, yes, but blood and death too. Sour sweat, excrement, and what flesh they had that wasn’t stretched over bulky musculature was hanging off them in states anywhere from rotting to necrotic.

If he ever managed an escape, unlikely that it would be, Celebrimbor resolved to determine through scientific means whether washing an orc would _actually_ kill it.

He wasn’t certain when he had begun to take refuge in such thoughts.

When had he stopped drawing courage from the rage in Sauron’s face when his scouts had reported yet another futile attempt to re-open the doors he and Narvi had built? When had the memory of his niece Celebrían’s smile ceased to give him strength, instead filling him with a cold, quiet dread that, even across the mountains, she would not be safe?

Sleep was hard to find, shackled as he was, but the few moments of it that he managed were inevitably hazy flashes of screaming and blood-slick pearls.

He had not dreamt of such horrors in over a thousand years.

Still, he could recall words in neither Sindarin nor his native Quenya that would describe how _viscerally_ the stench of orc reminded him of breezes fouled by piles of rotting corpses.

The orcs had a word for it, he was certain, but he was not yet so far gone as to look for inspiration in his captor’s mangled tongue, as suitable as it would likely be for describing the horror that Beleriand became.

After it sunk into the sea, Celebrimbor had hoped to never again be close enough to _smell _the Enemy’s hoard. Yet, Arda had not lived up to his expectations since before the death of his great grandfather, so it _was _rather ridiculous of him to have hoped it would start now.

Celebrimbor considered kicking the troll again out of spite, but he decided against it in favor of thinking of more effective ways to antagonize it. Kicking, as determined though a series of investigatory experiments, did little more than offer him some measure of petty vengeance at the price of the troll’s mild annoyance. Reflexively purging whatever bile was left in his stomach upon each waking did even less – the thing didn’t even _notice_.

His options were, admittedly, limited. Even if only his right hand was shackled, the rest of him was still suspended above the large, shale-skinned monstrosity that nearly ended the miserable lives of several orcs with each careless swing of its free hand.

But if he could get the troll to somehow drop him…

Well, he wouldn’t be the first of the Noldor to be crushed underfoot.

He wouldn’t even be the second.

But, no. Despite Celebrimbor’s best efforts, the troll either refused to acknowledge or, more likely, simply did not notice the efforts of its recalcitrant prisoner.

Thus, his waking commemorated the start of yet another lucid period of what he had determined would be the rest of the assuredly short time he had left in Middle Earth.

Short would not quite be short enough.

Far below Celebrimbor, the orcs, noticing his return to consciousness, began tittering in earnest. Most of it was a jumble of Orkish and Mannish tongues.

Over time he had found that if he listened closely to their conversations, he could just barely make out what was being said.

Celebrimbor did not listen closely.

In truth, he did not care to know, and he paid only enough attention to determine when the orcs had riled themselves up enough to ignore their orders and practice their aim with whatever debris they could scrape off the ground.

Mostly stones, and the decision to travel west towards the mingling of the Sirannon and Glanduin rivers meant they were plentiful.

Celebrimbor thought he wouldn’t mind that part so much if the orcs at least had decent aim and strength enough to hit somewhere vital on his skull.

It would, at the very least, mean that he no longer had to listen to whatever so-called language Sauron had his minions speaking.

He had first heard it on the tongue of the messenger bearing news of Elrond’s approach, and once the orcs realized how bothered he was by it, they had switched to speaking in it almost exclusively.

Celebrimbor suspected the basic content of their discussions did not change with the language in which they were spoken, but the grating, guttural sound of it worming its way into his ears made him wish to claw his way up the stake to see if it was sharp enough that he could depart for Mandos’ Halls under his own agency.

He was not certain he possessed the strength for it.

Mercifully, the troll did not join them in it, and its relative height provided something of a buffer of distance. For all their viciousness, the orcs were smaller or of height with the Mannish peoples that swelled Mordor’s ranks. They lacked the sheer strength needed to heft the wrought-iron bar, its eye-emblazoned banner, _and_ Sauron’s war trophy.

Celebrimbor would not stoop so low as to admit he was thankful for it.

It had been an age since he last saw this many of the Enemy’s foul creatures in one area. Of course there had been patrols, here and there; orcs skulking around Eregion’s distant borders, testing its defenses. But the last time he was this _close_ to the Enemy’s host, he had been threading his sword through an orc’s eye socket, to the tragedy-dulled thankfulness of Gondolin’s refugees.

But that was an age ago, and they were Morgoth’s then.

No longer.

This particular generation of orcs must know it well. Their bodies bore burns: cruel, blackened scorch marks curving into the same eye woven into the banner that whipped against Celebrimbor’s legs and back in heavy wind. Though he could barely make it out in the dim torchlight, it was the brand on the side of the troll’s head that Celebrimbor aimed for every time he tried to kick his way out of captivity.

Not that the troll cared. The orcs at least reacted, even if it _was_ in taunts and jeers punctuated with the occasional thrown object.

The night passed thus: the snickering of the orcs died down. A torch-lit army of abominations marched across the waste of Eregion beneath Varda’s uncaring glory. Only the steady swing of Celebrimbor’s body kept time. Though time, much like his bodily autonomy, had ceased to have substantive meaning, and its passage did little for the fogginess of stress and insufficient rest or the sense that one of Ungolient’s brood had taken up residence within his mouth.

It was nearly dawn when the regiment surrounding Celebrmbor slowed to a halt, though he heard no order called. In the faint predawn light rising behind the army, he could just make out the swamplands of the Nin-in-Eilph surrounding them and the River Gwathló that lay beyond. The vanguard, having arrived first, had already begun preparations for the army’s encampment; large, dark tents mostly, likely meant to shield orcs and trolls alike from the sun.

Not that Celebrimbor would object if the one carrying his banner happened to take too long and be instantly petrified.

There was little hope they would be ambushed during their preparations either; the Gwathló carried a deep, strong current, and the army was entrenched at Tharbad, the only nearby point of crossing. Though, a distant fort – built in the Númenórean style by Celebrimbor’s reckoning – watched over the deforested areas to the south, it was likely not manned heavily enough to do more than watch Mordor’s armies pass from behind their walls.

The troll marched forward, orcs frantically clearing out of its path, until it came to a stop in the center of the forming camp. Celebrimbor had barely stopped swinging before he was first pulled quickly upward then sent at a sharp, downward trajectory as the troll jammed the stake deep into the earth.

It stood straight up despite the weight of Celebrimbor and the heavy cloth of the war banner.

The troll lumbered off soon after, likely in search of its own shelter, leaving the orcs around Celebrimbor to begin pitching another tent.

It took form with his stake at its center; the fabric was just as dark as the rest of the army’s tents, but it seemed to be made of thinner material. What would have been a beautiful dawn managed to just barely breach the tent, and Celebrimbor could discern its boundaries rather than being left in pitch darkness.

By the time the sun rose, making the tent as light as it could get, the orcs had vanished. Their watch was taken by the Men in Sauron’s service.

They never seemed to get too close to the troll that carried Celebrimbor during the night marches, but their companies could always be spotted as distant, more concentrated torchlight. They were the ones who needed light to see, after all, so their clusters tended to be much brighter; the orcs only carried them for the effect the sight of their sheer numbers might have on any opposition. Or, on at least one memorable occasion, to light one another on fire for no discernable reason.

That Sauron had an army composed of both men and orcs was not surprising; Men had been fighting for and against one dark lord or another since the first age. Celebrimbor _was_ a little impressed that no one had been eaten, or that it hadn’t happened where he could see it, at least.

He wondered if the Men – even if they seemed to have accepted working with orcs and trolls as one of the many necessary evils of working for Mordor’s resident Dark Lord – were afraid of their fellow soldiers.

They certainly seemed to be afraid of Celebrimbor.

He expected it by now, watching the tent flap once more be pulled open by Mannish hands. Their lack of armor signified them as servants, rather than soldiers, and they bore no chains, so they were unlikely to be thralls or slaves.

Instead of brands, their skin bore ink signifying their allegiance; each had the same lidless eye, but widely varying, intricate swirls and patterns decorated the hands of each servant. The ink itself looked like fire in motion when they moved, and Celebrimbor found it to be disconcertingly beautiful.

He was also certain he had seen at least a couple of tattooed orcs, and was not certain why the brands were used at all.

The servants kept their eyes carefully downcast as they brought the day’s customary objects into the tent: a set of tables, one of which was threaded through with leather straps, various jars and bottles, braziers that were promptly filled with unlit coals, and a large basin of water took their places about the area.

They tried to steal glimpses of him though, in ways that looked as if the servants thought themselves surreptitious, and he would try to catch their eyes each time they did, though he doubted he would find his answers in their faces.

Each time he managed it, the servant who had been caught would avert their gaze quickly, just as the messenger in the workshop had.

The one who appeared to be in charge stood watching it all with an impassive eye. He blatantly ignored Celebrimbor’s horse attempts at speech, only grumbling under his breath at the interruptions. Though, Celebrimbor suspected that his frustration stemmed from the time the other servants took lighting the braziers and lingering around them rather than Celebrimbor himself.

They were quick with the ones farthest from him, but the closer to him the braziers had been placed, the more time the servants took before moving to the next closest one. Presumably, they were keeping their distance for as long as they could manage.

Perhaps it was his appearance they found off-putting.

Men, Celebrimbor knew, were more susceptible to cold than the Eldar, and the servants wore several thick layers of clothing against the spring chill. In contrast, Celebrimbor had been left stripped, exposed in his entirety to the elements and the uncomfortable glances of the servants.

The sun had set not more than eight times since his rope bonds and chair had been exchanged for an iron shackle and a stake; even with the speed of healing granted to one of the Eldar who had known the light of the trees, his chest and abdomen remained a ragged, aching ruin that still dripped uncomfortably from time to time.

To see a prisoner wounded so, suspended each night to march, _and_ to see that he yet lived – well, humans had always had odd reactions to learning of the all that his people could suffer and survive.

Or perhaps they had simply been ordered against interacting with him. Though, if Sauron was worried over the softening of his servants’ hearts, he should have used orcs for this.

Beneath where he was suspended, the servants finally managed to coax flame from the last brazier. It was the one closest to Celebrimbor, of course, and the servants scrambled back from him with little subtlety once it was done.

By then, the rest of the braziers had nearly fully warmed the tent. The servants looked reluctant to leave the warmth of it, but at a barked order from their supervisor, they left as quickly as they had come.

With the departure of his chance for a more definite answer gone once more, Celebrimbor sagged, melting into the heat and the stillness of the tent.

The warmth seeped into him, chasing the cold from the march out of his body.

Another small mercy then, that he had not been left to the cold as he had been so many times in the workshop.

It would not be right to say he reveled in it; he was a prisoner still, and he should not have felt anything even remotely like pleasure, especially not at something so simple as the heat and light of burning coals.

Celebrimbor hung his head in exhaustion, in shame, and tried to will away the guilty thought with little success.

At the movement, his hair – only slightly tangled from the night’s wind – slipped from behind his shoulders to drape about him. It was long, still, and as unmarred as his face and hands.

A message, and a threat.

Sauron had ensured Elrond’s forces would know _exactly_ whom had been captured, though he supposed there was little doubt of that if his people reported making it to Khazad-dûm without him. Add that to the _specificity_ of his bonds and the effort that had been made to locate the small, star-shaped hair ornaments he only wore when he felt like being a particularly offensive presence at court –

By the time they reached Lindon, it would not matter that he had held his tongue and his secrets when Sauron marched towards two of the rings all the same. To most, the display Sauron had made of him would only reinforce all the things they already thought about his family, and, by extension, Celebrimbor.

_Hubris_, they had said when he and Galadriel went east to survey the land that would become Ost-in-Edhil. _Usurper_, they had called him when Galadriel left the city to join her husband in Lothlorien, never mind that the term might as easily have been applied to her quick rise to power among the Nandor.

But, how _considerate_ of Sauron to give him such a high vantage point from which he might watch the unfolding consequences of his mistakes and once again see the word _traitor_ form on his people’s lips at the sight of him.

He had not followed those of his house since Nargothrond, and had not sworn the reckless, shortsighted oath his father and uncles had spoken _twice_. He had not fought at Doriath, at Sirion, and with all his works he had tried to wash his hands clean of the blood that he, as much as those who called him such, had spilled at Alqualondë. Yet –

_From the West unto the uttermost East; to evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; the Dispossessed shall they be forever._

He remembered Mandos’ Doom well. And, for all that Celebrimbor had tried to forge something new and beautiful, something that would _last_ –

There were very few left who had heard those words spoken with their own ears, but there were _many _who knew them by heart.

And hanging, shackled to an iron banner by his right hand, in the heart of the Enemy’s camp, and the rubble of Ost-in-Edhil several days’ march behind him, Celebrimbor knew them to be true.

He was as damned as the rest of his family.

He always had been.

The thought weighed heavy on him, making the oblivion of sleep all the more tempting.

In the absence of Men attempting to avoid him while stuck in the same small space and without the movement of the troll to keep him somewhat lucid, the quiet heat of the tent and flickering of the braziers had coaxed him towards it slowly, promising sweet, if temporary escape.

It would be fleeting, at best, but he longed for it all the same.

He slowed his breathing, and steeped in warmth and firelight, unconsciousness took him, pulling him within the ephemeral freedom of Irmo’s domain.

* * *

It was an odd trick of the warmth and quiet that, though Celebrimbor had felt nothing resembling safety in longer than he cared to remember, his eyes had fallen closed while he slept.

They had not yet seen fit to open, and the lethargy that had overtaken him made him disinclined to force them.

The tent was still, and his rest remained uninterrupted, so – 

He would take what little peace he could find.

The pain in his shoulder had faded to nothing more than a vaguely uncomfortable pang and, when his mouth parted in a yawn, something cold and curved pressed against his dry, cracked lips. A vessel, it seemed, and full of water too, though he had not heard footsteps nor sensed the presence of another.

Forget Morgoth – truly, Irmo was the cruelest of the Valar to taunt him with such dreams.

But his half-sleeping state made him helpless to its pull, and Celebrimbor drunk deeply of the illusion all the same. It was cool and sweet and soothing against his ragged throat, but it pulled away before he had drained it, and, unthinking, Celebrimbor chased it, leaning forward with his eyes still closed.

Later, he would not be able to say whether it was the low hum of approval or the hand that that moved to brush his hair behind his ear that jolted him back to full consciousness.

It did not matter; he recognized the touch all the same.

Wild terror pried Celebrimbor’s eyes open. He jerked back as far as the chain and lack of leverage would let him, fleeing the forge heat of that skin and the cruelty hidden beneath that gentle touch.

He _had_ slept long; the braziers had sunk to a low glow at best, throwing little heat, and it was only warm because –

Sauron laughed, low and under his breath, and followed Celebrimbor’s retreat. His hand reclaimed its place, thumb stroking the bone of Celebrimbor’s cheek. He smiled softly even as Celebrimbor’s lungs drew air in quick, frightened bursts.

He could not stop them, and he had no control of the sense of panic rising in his body. He shook; the last leaf clinging desperately to a tree in autumn, set to fall and spiral down and down and –

“Hello Tyelpë,” Sauron said, his smile widening as Celebrimbor’s frantic eyes shifted to meet his gaze in horror, “Are you well?”

If there was noise beyond the tent, he could not hear it. The world had been filed down to a singular, all-consuming presence, and Celebrimbor could only stare, wide-eyed and unmoving but for the tremors that wracked his body.

Sauron’s smile slowly faded, sinking into a frown at Celebrimbor’s failure to produce a response other than reflexive fear.

His hand traced down Celebrimbor’s face, along the edge of his jaw, until two fingers pressed into the pulse point at the underside of it. As if he couldn’t _see_ how rapidly Celebrimbor’s blood pumped within his veins if he cared to utilize even a modicum of his power.

Sauron’s expression was longsuffering as he removed himself from Celebrimbor’s immediate vicinity. He crossed the tent to do something indeterminable with the salves and vials of liquid the servants had left.

Celebrimbor’s heart felt as if it was about to rip _another_ bloody hole in his chest from the speed of its convulsions.

It would be longer than he cared to count before the shaking fully subsided and his pulse slowed, exhausted, to a more normal rhythm.

The frantic, terror-blind period between waking face-to-face with the Enemy’s lieutenant and returning to something resembling responsiveness became shorter each day, though. That it did was disquieting, even if Celebrimbor found it much easier to think without having to work around mindless – though justified – fear drowning his fëa.

And he _would_ need a clear mind to escape this. If the opportunity and a sharp knife ever presented themselves, he would not hesitate; if he had learned anything over the last two years, it was the exact placement of his ribs and how much pressure was needed for a blade to pierce the skin and muscle between them.

An age ago, it had been drilled into him by his eldest uncle that death, possibly even the eternal darkness itself, was far preferable to languishing in the Enemy’s mercy. At the time, the thought of such an act had turned his stomach and sent fear lancing sharp and quick across his back. Now, though –

Celebrimbor could not tell whether Sauron had heard his thought through a lapse in his mental barriers or if he had simply determined that Celebrimbor was sufficiently calmed down, but he finished whatever task he had set himself to and bought forth several of the containers from the table. A stand had been placed close to where Celebrimbor was restrained, and it filled quickly.

Sauron crossed the tent with an effortless, deadly grace that hid nothing of the power willfully contained within his physical form. Annatar, apparently, had been a concession to the incarnate sensibilities of Ost-in-Edhil’s scholars and artificers, or else Sauron’s best attempt at appearing nonthreatening.

This was … not.

Annatar had been beautiful; comely and golden in all the ways for which Celebrimbor’s heart had always had a weakness. But Annatar had been as the dawn filtered through treetops. Sauron, by contrast, was the unrelenting midday sun on the arid eastern plains. Each time he stepped into the tent, Celebrimbor could hardly bear the light of him.

For all that Celebrimbor had heard the stories of horror and death, he had never actually _seen_ Sauron in Beleriand; he had always been glad of it.

If only his luck had lasted.

He was wildfire, or else magma drawn up from deep within Arda; beautiful, but terrible in its destruction and fury. Annatar had been subtle. Now, no one could look upon the maia and doubt that he was one of the Powers who had shaped the world. No one would even _think_ to question that _this _was a form that had been built for war.

It was still _him_ – in the bone structure, perhaps, or maybe the hair – but there was also something _about_ him that… It was an Elvish form, like Annatar, but also _not_. Taller, but it wasn’t just that. It was something about the barely-there flashes of light beneath his skin; something about his too-sharp teeth; something about his _eyes_.

Something that made Celebrimbor instinctively try to move away when Sauron took that final step towards him, taking advantage of his limited mobility to back him against the stake. He had come without armor or mail, this time, and Celebrimbor hated the way that part of him whispered in relief that its sharp edges wouldn’t cut him when –

Sauron pressed closer, leaning into him until Celebrimbor could feel the heat of him through the smooth fabric of his robes. Celebrimbor was not suspended very high – the stake was planted _deep_ within the earth – but it was high enough that the top of Sauron’s head was about level with his nose.

It was strange to have the elevated position yet still feel as if another towered over him.

Celebrimbor moved as far from him as the chain would allow.

It was not far, and Sauron disregarded the distance in any case. One arm curled around his leg, hiking it up to pull him close and balance Celebrimbor against his body. It removed the strain of gravity from his manacled wrist – _and_ any volition of movement Celebrimbor might have had. The other arm wrapped around Celebrimbor’s back to hold him in place.

Celebrimbor’s free arm strained against him, futilely trying to push him back, but the strength of a maia was not easily denied.

Sauron laughed a little at Celebrimbor’s efforts, smirking at his scowl, before bending his head to press his lips to Celebrimbor’s clavicle. The kiss burned as if it were a metal brand.

_This_, Celebrimbor thought, was the worst of it. As if deceiving and torturing him wasn’t enough, he insisted on this _mockery_ of his time with Annatar in Ost-in-Edhil as well.

Not for the first time, he wondered if it would have been better if Sauron had simply killed him outright once he had as good as guessed the locations of the Three.

_Mercy_, he imagined Sauron would call the choice to keep him alive.

But Celebrimbor knew it was anything but.

Sauron’s attentions had moved from his collar to his neck – leaving a trail of small bites much gentler than the rending of flesh that Celebrimbor suspected his teeth were capable of – before he finally pulled back, meeting Celebrimbor’s unsettled expression with the confident set of his features once more. 

“Tyelperinquar,” he crooned, at length. The hand not supporting Celebrimbor’s weight moved to his free arm – the one still trying in vain to push Sauron off – and raised it until it was level with the manacled hand and – with a length of rope pulled from somewhere unseen – tying it in place. “You have delayed this long enough, and we must accomplish _something_ this morning if you are to remain in good enough shape for tonight, let alone for the march to Lindon.”

These were not the circumstances under which Celebrimbor had anticipated his next appearance in the realm of the High King. In his mind, there would have been much more trade policy and tariff negotiation involved and far fewer blatant displays of his betrayal by his former lover.

Celebrimbor did not know the strength of the forces that Elrond had brought with him, save that they were too small in number to put much of a dent in the vast host of Mordor. He knew even less of what sort of defense Ereinion and Círdan had organized since his city’s fall.

But he hoped they would have archers, at least; preferably those with competent aim, good longbows, and few qualms about putting the last known blood of a kinslaying family far beyond Sauron’s reach.

A reach that was, methodically and unceremoniously, being used to poke and prod at Celebrimbor’s chest and the wounds that lay in various stages of healing.

The deeper cuts and avulsions had been stitched closed at the beginning of the march, but there were many. They had not been allowed to fester despite the torture, but they had spent so long being prevented from healing that Celebrimbor suspected they had forgotten how.

Sauron seemed to be of a different mind, and he set about using the various poultices and salves accordingly. They permeated the air with a sharp, astringent smell that mixed with the smoke of the smoldering coals left in the braziers, forming a thick, soporific combination that – despite Celebrimbor’s efforts to stay awake – dulled the edges of his awareness.

The effect grew stronger with each gentle touch that reminded him, unbidden, of times when this sort of contact was not only acceptable, but welcome.

As Sauron worked his way through the containers, Celebrimbor felt his breathing deepen and the panic dull as the balm soothed his ragged chest. Eventually, he found that he could not summon the energy to care overmuch – or to worry that he could not.

Sauron seemed to be perfectly fine with this arrangement and went about correcting stitches that had been pulled the night previous. Whatever he had used to salve the wounds must have worked; Celebrimbor could barely feel his ministrations.

It was a courtesy that had not been extended to him in the two years prior.

Yet, the marks that that time had left upon his body had begun to fade, if more slowly than could normally be expected of one of the Noldor who had known the light of the trees. The damage was extensive, yes, but with proper care, the scarring would be clean and lacking in pain.

And here he was, against all expectations, receiving proper care.

This was not, actually, a good thing.

Despite the four hundred years that he had spent working with Annatar, Celebrimbor was not _completely _oblivious. He _knew_ what this was.

Not that it was exactly _difficult_ to miss when Sauron seemed to barely go a day without saying something about _value_ or _worth_ that essentially boiled down to keeping Celebrimbor in chains – and reasonably good health considering – for his knowledge, his abilities, or, considering what he had heard of Angband, for Sauron’s own sadistic amusement.

Or perhaps Sauron was only keeping him alive in order to have a captive audience – in the literal sense – available whenever he wished.

He could not have said when Sauron had begun speaking, but he admitted that it was entirely possible that he had just never _stopped_ in the first place.

“ – but we had to make due.” Sauron said, continuing a thought Celebrimbor had not bothered to catch. “It simply does not _grow _this far north, especially not so long out of season. A failing of Eregion’s climate, certainly, but we can fix that once your people have stopped being pointlessly recalcitrant and returned my rings. For now, this is an acceptable substitute, though the effect it has on the subject’s lucidity…” Sauron paused, setting down the stone mortar he had been holding and used his newly free hand to cup Celebrimbor’s chin.

His head turned involuntarily with the pull, and he glared weakly.

Sauron simply hummed in disapproval.

“Well, it leaves something to be desired,” he said. “But I suppose that, in the past, I’ve had _worse_ supplies at hand. Imagine being ordered to keep one of Melkor’s favored prisoners alive while your enemy’s seige had _conveniently_ blocked access to all the places where efficient coagulants could be found.”

He paused a moment, a slight scowl crossing his face. It seemed to Celebrimbor as if he were lost in thought.

“Be thankful Eregion has _something_ vaguely useful and that this –” he gestured to the mortar he’d placed on a nearby table. “Is not spider venom.”

Celebrimbor honestly might prefer the venom. That, at least, he might try drinking it to escape this. 

The hand left his chin, but he could not see what was done with it.

“How does that feel?” Sauron asked.

Celebrimbor looked at him blankly, not feeling anything in particular beyond annoyance, the beginnings of a cramp in his shoulder, and a cold sweat breaking at the thought that Sauron was doing _something_ and he _did not know what it was_.

It was answer enough, apparently.

“It does not lack for effectiveness, at least.” Sauron said, and set about grabbing fresh bandages for Celebrimbor’s chest. He sounded far too pleased with himself for someone who was taking time out of conquering Eregion to reverse his work of the last two years.

He seemed set to begun discussing the biological properties of yet _another_ poultice made from whichever of Eregion’s plant life his orcs hadn’t managed to trample yet –

“Must you speak?” Celebrimbor cut him off, hissing around his sluggish tongue. “The sound of it grates in my ears.”

“Truly?” Sauron looked amused rather than offended as Celebrimbor would have hoped. Implacable hands pulled him slightly forward so that the bandages could be wrapped around his back. “I have always been told I have a lovely voice, not least of which by one whose opinions on beauty and craftsmanship were held by the Miridin in great regard. That time we inadvertently called attention to the acoustics of the Mírdain’s great hall, for example…”

Celebrimbor wasn’t certain if the correct response to that would blushing furiously or blanching to a pale, deathlike color. Instead, he settled for bearing his teeth at Sauron, the points of his ears pressed back, flat against his head.

“And, in truth,” Sauron continued, smirking, “I have never met a better singer in Arda.”

“Although…” he peered up at Celebrimbor from beneath the shadow of his hair, eyes glinting with quiet malice. “Some have thought to prove otherwise.”

If Celebrimbor had a dagger for every time Sauron tried to goad him with _another_ death he had caused…

He did not.

But he could and did spit in Sauron’s face; he even managed to hit him, this time.

To describe the responding expression as deadpan would have been generous.

“Must you always be so _difficult?_” Sauron asked, wiping the offending substance away with an edge of his surcoat. It remained as frustratingly pristine as his robes had in Ost-in-Edhil. “I don’t remember you being _nearly_ this uncooperative before your betrayal…”

“_My_ betrayal?” Celebrimbor scoffed, “I don’t recall your offered instruction on ringcraft being offered conditionally, _Annatar_.”

Sauron hummed noncommittally.

“It’s better than the other name, I suppose, but you _do_ know that infernal insult isn’t actually –”

Not _this_ again.

“Has it occurred to you,” Celebrimbor asked, seething. “That I do not actually _care?_ That, just maybe, I lost any interest in respecting whatever you might prefer to be called when you lost the right to use _any_ of _my_ names?”

Sauron’s glare was fierce, and as he tied off the last bandage, he leaned in _close_.

“And when would _that_ have been, _Curufinwe?_ I suppose you’ve lost the right to use that one, though.” Sauron laughed, loud and bitterly, “You always seemed _more_ than pleased to hear your mother name on my lips, Tyelperinquar, though I suppose I could revert to _Celebrimbor_ if you insist on the formality of the edict of a long-dead Sinda king.”

By the end of it, he was close enough that Celebrimbor could see the striation of his irises waver and break into something like flame. And, like fire, heat radiated off him in waves scorching enough that Celebrimbor felt his skin might char and crack from proximity alone. Sauron continued, his voice rising in increments, seemingly uncaring of any who might overhear or the very real possibility that any loss of control over his powers might reverse any good he had done for Celebrimbor’s injuries.

Or, perhaps, that he might finally kill Celebrimbor outright.

Taking his chance to aggravate Sauron further, Celebrimbor lashed out with his knee, aiming to deliver a swift blow to his torso that the maia deftly dodged.

The heat in the tent increased. Sauron’s forearm slammed into Celebrimbor’s chest, shoving him even more securely against the stake. Celebrimbor imagined he could hear a slight sizzling.

“I cannot recall any point when I _stopped_ being able to address by name the one who _chose_ to bind himself to me.” He said, loud enough to verge on shouting. “Need we examine the nature of the term ‘indissoluble’ once more, _my own?_ Or doth thou require more_ material_ evidence to remind thee of thy –”

“_Evidence?__”_ Celebrimbor cut him off, near-screaming. “How about_ when you spent the last two years torturing me?!”_

Beyond the tent’s entrance, Celebrimbor could hear the guards shifting as if they were considering making a run for it. Though he doubted either of them understood the exact nature of the argument, or the language with which it was shouted.

Inside the tent, Sauron _seethed_.

The arm not pinning Celebrimbor’s chest looped up around his shoulders. Sauron’s free hand fisted in the loose hair at Celebrimbor’s neck, pulling tight. It forced his head down sharply, until he could focus on nothing but his captor.

He glared at Sauron

For a moment, the world was quiet.

They could have been the only two within it and Celebrimbor would not have noticed.

Sauron’s hand loosened, but his strength remained unyielding as he pressed their foreheads together.

When he spoke one more, he spoke softly; beneath a whispered hiss, and despite their closeness, Celebrimbor had to strain to hear it.

“Must thou be so _difficult_, my love?” He asked, his breath was hot and dry as flame against Celebrimbor’s lips. It slowed, incrementally, until the rage seemed to seep out of him.

“Do you truly not see that I am doing this for the betterment of Middle Earth?” Sauron asked.

Celebrimbor didn’t answer.

“Would you prefer to be left to hang, my love? To _rot? _I do not _have_ to heal you, Tyelperinquar. And that I offer such _reparation_ for what you have _forced_ me to do is_ generous_, is it not?”

“_Forced _you?” Celebrimbor spat._ “You _invaded my city. _You_ tortured me and chained me here. You can’t just pretend this isn’t _your fault_, Annatar. And _I’m _certainly not going to forget that it is.”

“Yet, you did make the Three without my knowledge, to subvert me. Any other would have died for such injury against me; yet you live. Have you not seen my forgiveness, dear heart? Would you not grant me the same, for whatever inanity angers thee so?”

“_Inanity?_ _You_ – ”

Celebrimbor choked on his words. Literally; his throat felt as if it were closing off and, by the time he’d managed to not actually cough up anything important – a lung, for instance – Sauron’s face had shifted to a perplexed, disappointed expression.

Before the end, Celebrimbor remembered him reserving it for the moments he spent questioning the One’s decision to create incarnates and why he had to make them, in Annatar’s terms, so ‘confusing.’

For a moment, it seemed as if Sauron would simply turn and walk out of the tent without another word and sulk elsewhere. But, even as Annatar, Celebrimbor had never known him to be satisfied unless he had the last word.

“This is becoming… tiresome, Tyelperinquar,” he said. “But if your immature resistance is so important to you, then by all means continue. Your efforts will do nothing to impede my plans. After all –”

His tone was flippant. Dismissive. As if Celebrimbor’s agency did not matter in the slightest. Celebrimbor supposed that, to Sauron, it did not.

The pressure of his arm withdrew from Celebrimbor’s chest. Though his other hand remained firmly laced in Celebrimbor’s hair, the newly freed one reached up to trace the length of his suspended arm. Sauron’s fingertips came to rest against the center of his palm, four points of burning heat.

“It took your uncle the loss of a hand, the tenacity of his lover, and _divine intervention_ to free him from a chain such as this.” Sauron said, pulling his head down far enough to press his lips to Celebrimbor’s brow, lingering long enough that Celebrimbor could feel the smile against his skin.

“But I think that Manwë came to regret that, no? Findekáno certainly would have, had he lived long enough to see what became of Doriath and Sirion. And, as I recall –” his hand moved down to curl around the tender line where the shackle cut into Celebrimbor’s skin. He allowed just enough space between them to meet Celebrimbor’s eyes once more “Your people felt similarly. Do you care to hypothesize if they would dare such an ill bargain twice?”

He still could not speak his response. Celebrimbor lurched forward on the chain, closing the distance between them, and bit at Sauron, tearing a bloody gash in his lip.

Sauron stepped back almost too quickly, releasing him, and touched two fingers to the wound. He held the hand between them. Bright red blood stained his otherwise immaculate nail, dripping in a single rivulet down his fingers to pool in the hollow of his palm.

His lip had already begun to heal.

“No,” he said, looking up once more to meet Celebrimbor’s glare. “I suppose you already know.”

He turned and crossed the tent, almost reaching the other side of it before feeling returned to Celebrimbor’s throat.

“Keep your hand, love, and your honor,” Sauron said, mere steps from the heavy cloth of the entrance. When he turned back to look at Celebrimbor, his eyes blazed with something unidentifiable.

“It would be more than Maedhros ever managed.”

Celebrimbor cursed him as he left, but Sauron stepped out into the encampment without another word.

The taste of his blood lingered.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from [Holy Sonet XIV](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god) by John Donne


End file.
